Colonel John Paul Stapp and Murphy's Law

"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

As a youngster growing up near Lockheed, I became interested in aviation. I sold newspapers at the entrance to some of the giant plants where state of the art aircraft were being developed and built. I saw U-2's and F-104's flying overhead and eventually was lucky enough to have a grand tour of the complex including the ejection-seat shop and huge CAD room where computers were drawing wing designs on plotters larger than a pool table.

An obsessive bookworm, I read everything I could put my grimy hands on regarding aviation. One of my favorite subjects was G-forces and the man who rode the rocket sleds, Colonel John Paul Stapp. The vivid pictures of the torture he endured during these tests were etched into my mind and never forgotten. He was a true hero of mine.

Flash forward many years to 1998 when I first met Fanny. She mentioned that she was the niece of Paul Stapp. My fascination was recalled and renewed and I began to research him again. I found more and more interesting facts about his remarkable life. His research led to seat belts in automobiles and the safe ejection systems used in military aircraft. Reknowned for those achievements something amusing is often lost. That is, he made "Murphy's Law" a well-known phrase.

Quoting Wikipedia: Witty and charismatic and thus popular with the press and his staff, Stapp's team in particular, and its workplace subculture is also the clear originating source for the ubiquitous principle known as Murphy's law. There is no question, setting aside the specific murkiness of its attribution, that Stapp was its actual popularizer and probably framed its final form, first using the soon to be widespread term in his first press conference about Project MX981 in the phrase, "We do all of our work in consideration of Murphy's Law" in a nonchalant answer to a reporter. It was his team that, within an adaged-filled subculture, and while using a new device developed by reliability engineering expert Major Edward Murphy[2], coined the euphemistic phrase and began to use it in the months prior to that press conference. When the unfamiliar "Law" was clarified by a subsequent follow-up question, it soon burst into the press in various diverse publications, and got picked up by commentators and talk programs.

Regrettably, I never got to meet Uncle Paul. Fanny and I maintain a collection of Colonel Paul memorabilia including a poster-sized reproduction of the Time magazine cover shown above. He was a true American hero and every year, I write to the President and our legislators requesting that he be posthumously promoted to General.